Monthly Archives: September 2015

When I was about 12 I was an unstoppable letter writer. I wrote to aircraft companies for pictures of planes but I also wrote to countries asking what it was like to live there. One such letter was sent to the, then, Soviet Union. It obviously ended up on the desk at the tourist bureau because a month or so later I received a pile of travel pamphlets from the Soviet Union. Two items particularly struck me: the Trans Siberia Railroad and, what was then, Leningrad. Well finally I am on my way to to one: St Petersburg. The name change itself reminds us how much the world has changed in those 53 years. 

Thursday 24th of September. Hetty and I are on the Princess Maria waiting to head to Russia!

We have now been in St Petersburg for three days. It is an amazing city of contrasts: wealth and poverty, old Ladas and brand new Range Rovers, smartly dressed people and the poor.

Highlights: the Hermitage Museum, The Peter Paul fortress, the Museum of Political History, the Church on the Spilled Blood and much much more.

Saturday: 

Our holiday has started … but we are stressed already. Our original flight to Sydney was delayed meaning we would miss all our connecting flights. So we were changed to another Sydney flight. Then at the last moment we were changed to a direct Singapore flight. We had to rush through customs because it was going to leave in 30 minutes. Arriving at the boarding gate, after going to the wrong one, we find our new flight delayed by 2 hours due to a tyre change.

In the whole scheme of things with all the refugees in the world -we can’t complain , and a plane with a better tyre can’t be bad thing.

Later Saturday:

After a 3 hour delay we finally got on our plane and arrived safely in Singapore. The warm fragrant air is striking as the plane doors open. Singapore airport is the revolving door of the world. People from all over the world coming in and going on to their next destination.

Early Sunday Morning:

We are in an aluminium tube travelling at 38,000 feet at about 855 kms per hour over Russia. There are still about 2000 kms and 3 hours to go before we get off in Helsinki.

  
  
My body is telling me it is 10:30 in the morning. But the pitch black outside the plane and my weary eyes tells me time has changed.

Once we arrived in foggy Helsinki, being Sunday, we looked for a worship service to attend. A few people had told me about a church built into a rock. So we went there – Temppeliaukio Church, a Lutheran church. We didn’t understand a word but the music was sublime. We took  an order of worship and asked one of the stewards what the Bible passages were. We promised to read them later … in English.